


where we keep the light we're given

by strikinglight



Series: Stopping for a Spell [6]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Festivals, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mages, Seasonal, Soul-Searching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-05 07:56:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15166124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/strikinglight
Summary: “How do you spend your days, then?”“Reading. Walking. Going into town.” Phichit shrugged. “We help weatherproof the boats and such, read the winds for the fishermen. A little healing as well, here and there. You won’t lack for things to do, Yuuri.”Hasetsu had been much the same, the magic built brick by brick into the walls of houses, sewn stitch by stitch into every cloak and boot—and while Yuuri had loved it from the first, that had not stopped him from wondering what more there might be, out in the wide world. What place there might be for him that was not simply the place where he’d been born. Phichit’s days, too, sounded like they were governed by an ordinary enough routine, prosaic and familiar, and yet his dark eyes were sparkling when they caught Yuuri’s sidelong, as if to say they were on the verge of a great adventure, and Yuuri simply did not know it yet.





	1. spring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mayerwien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/gifts), [museicalitea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/museicalitea/gifts).



> ~~This is totally not Yuuri-goes-to-Fantasy-Detroit, but also who am I kidding the parallels are embarrassingly obvious.~~  
> 
> So the story of how Phichit and Yuuri became best friends in this AU has been incubating in my mind for quite a while, but I only just now got that final push over the cliff's edge to write it, and the push was harder than expected because it's a thing that looks to have spiraled into something with...... multiple chapters....... I guess I missed these boys and this 'verse because everything is now coming back to bite me in the butt with a vengeance. So please do get comfortable, and by that I mean buckle up for the softest floofiest fantasy rollercoaster ride ever, 
> 
> Timeframe-wise, this is a distant-ish prequel set 3-4 years before the other fics in this series. As usual, I've done my best to make sure it can be read as a standalone!
> 
> This monstrosity is a sort-of welcome home present for May, coauthor, old and dear friend, favorite partner-in-crime—and in our time together, we have had _many_ bad ideas.
> 
> This is also dedicated with love to Megan, who singlehandedly reignited both May's and my motivation to Write More Things for this AU after letting it go into hibernation for a year, and who is just generally an absolutely lovely person and one of my favorite people to go on Adventures with, writing-related or otherwise. You are fantastic and wonderful, Megan, and I'm glad to finally celebrate your wonderfulness with a story, wahhh. It would probably not exist, and especially not in this form, if not for you. <3
> 
> [Title/mood music.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXC80ZXQhvQ)

**i. spring**

 

Dusk was falling, the sun already molten and dimming gently on its slow sink down into the ocean, when Yuuri rode into the little town on the southern coast. As he turned over his shoulder to follow its path, his first thought was _This is where I die._

He thought this mainly because the very second his attention wandered away from the road and toward the sunset, his horse had begun to buck and shy beneath him, startled by a boy juggling on the street corner. Only this boy was juggling fire—or so it appeared to Yuuri when he whipped his head around, already half out of the saddle, scanning the area for the possible cause of the accident that could for all he knew soon lead to his untimely death—cascading flames in vivid shades of orange and yellow and green, leaping so quickly through the air between the boy’s hands it was almost as if they were alive.

Yuuri had taken a tumble off a horse a few times before, but only ever in the meadow outside his village that his father used sometimes as a practice yard when Yuuri was a boy, all soft grass and springy ground, perfect to break a fall. And he had learned to ride on old Kumo, a gentle grey gelding who had seen everything and was impossible to surprise, so every little accident had been his own fault, the consequence of poor balance or a shaky seat or nerves.

The years since then had given him more than enough opportunities to practice, of course, and he had been journeying from town to town astride this particular chestnut mare for a year now, about—long enough to trust her with his life, but Yuuri knew her blood did tend to run on the hotter side of warm, and this was a cobbled, unfamiliar road it would have been all too easy to crack his head on, should he fall.

Ever since he left his home village to see more of the world, he had been keeping a mental list of all the dangers he might encounter, warning himself to beware of highwaymen, hurricanes, earthquakes, wild bears in the mountains, perhaps even a war. That list had only grown longer with every season that passed, and while he had been fortunate enough to avoid any serious threats to his life thus far, he had never allowed himself to believe for even a second that he would always be so lucky. And perhaps this was it—his luck running out, at last.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, girl, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you—hey. Hey, now.”

That was the juggling boy, his flames vanished into the air, the crowd around him drawing cautiously backwards as he approached. _Don’t come near,_ Yuuri thought, still with that strange clarity that he had heard possessed people nearing the end of life. _You might get kicked, and die too._

But if there was any danger to his own life, the juggling boy appeared to be either unaware of it or ignoring it entirely; there was no fear in his stance, or in his steps, or in the quiet voice he was using to talk to Ringo— _easy, easy._

It was then, after some considerable delay, that Yuuri remembered he might do a number of things to help avert his dying, at least in the current situation.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine! Or, well, mostly fine…” Squeezing his legs in to keep his seat, Yuuri reached down to touch his horse’s mane and then her neck, rubbing in soothing motions with one hand while the other held the rein. “Whoa, Ringo! Steady. Steady. You’re not going to throw me, are you? Your oldest, dearest friend?”

Between the two of them they managed to calm the horse down and convince her not to bolt, though it did take a few long minutes during which the bystanders dispersed and the sun sank about a quarter of the way below the horizon. The boy held her head as Yuuri dismounted, and they led her to the seawall by the side of the road, where Yuuri passed him a horse treat to make amends with before leaning heavily against the stones, huffing and puffing to catch his breath.

“There, girl. I really am sorry.” The boy offered his hand to Ringo with the palm flat and the treat laid in the very center. When he turned to regard Yuuri, his face was flushed, sheepish. “We don’t get many riders down this way this time of year.”

“Don’t be sorry. I wasn’t paying attention either; it usually takes a lot to startle her.” Remembering the little flames, and how quickly they had arced through the air as the boy tossed them from hand to hand, Yuuri added, “You were putting on quite the show for the children there.”

“Thank you. I like making them laugh,” the boy said, chuckling as Ringo pushed her nose into his palm, all earlier slights seemingly forgiven. “You’re a mage too, then? Those are some potent charms you’ve put on her tack.”

He must have felt it when he touched the reins, Yuuri realized—charms for comfort and protection and preservation from wear and tear, stitched into the leather of saddle and bridle, spelled onto the iron buckles. He’d laid them all himself before setting out, and had been careful since to maintain them at the turn of every moon. Immediately he felt his cheeks warm up, unsure whether to be proud or embarrassed.

“My name is Yuuri Katsuki.” Even as he said it he was aware that it didn’t exactly answer the question. “Are you the town wizard? Celestino Cialdini?”

Yuuri had grown up among wizards, but in his travels he’d quickly found that small towns and villages tended to have only one. Most mages, especially those that had been trained in spellcraft at the royal university, flocked instead to the big cities in search of fortune or renown, finding employ in noble houses or in the direct service of the king. That was why it had been easy, all things considered, to remember Celestino Cialdini, the one name his mother had encouraged him to seek out if he ever found himself in the south.

That made the boy grin, showing all his teeth. “Me, the town wizard? No, I’m just the apprentice. Phichit’s the name.” He lifted his arm and pointed up the road, past Yuuri. “Celestino’s the Master Lightkeeper. If you’re all right to go up there with me, I can introduce you to him.”

Yuuri followed the pointing hand with his eyes, up and up toward the lighthouse on the cliff above the town. How incredibly tall it was, he thought, from this distance. How grand, in a strange and somber way, that single white tower and all around it so much nothing, standing like a soldier in the fading light.

“Lead the way,” he said to Phichit, and straightened up, taking Ringo’s rein in hand. It was uphill, but not far to walk, and it would be easier this way to address any further surprises.

The Master Lightkeeper and his apprentice, as it turned out, lived in a stone cottage that looked as though it had been nested by hand in the high grass at the top of the cliff, flanked on the seaward side by the lighthouse and on the inland side by a storage shed, and beyond that a stable where Ringo was now billeted next to Chailai, Phichit’s own aging mare. It had no hedges, no lawn, only a rambling garden plot out back where a few cucumber vines were persisting stubbornly, and constellations and constellations of wild dandelions studding every patch of ground where Yuuri thought to step.

The Master Lightkeeper himself, Yuuri soon found, had something of his home in him too—something that was at once austere and overgrown in his broad build and strong jaw and incongruously long, curling hair that looked for all the world like it belonged on the head of a princess in a fairytale. Everything about Celestino seemed to loom just as the tower did, even as they sat together at the dining table in the cottage with Phichit in between them, and he had a way especially of folding his arms and regarding Yuuri with such unwavering, inscrutable attention that made him want to pull the hood of his cloak down over his face, hiding.

But all Celestino had said when they entered was, “Tell me,” and so Yuuri told them about how he was the son of the innkeeper at Hasetsu, and how he had left the village at the turn of his eighteenth year to make his way in the world and study other magic. He told them where he had been in the year since, up mountains and down rivers and in and out of the biggest cities in the kingdom, and the mages he had met and all the arts they had shown him, herblore and beast-speech and illusion-casting and star-reading and the rest—and how at the end of it all, he’d remembered he had not yet been to the sea, and that his mother had given him a name to call, should he ever pass this way.

“You don’t need to go out of your way to instruct me if you have other duties, sir. I promise I won’t be in the way; mostly I just want to observe the work you do.” Yuuri’s palms had begun to go clammy as he talked, and he pressed them together in his lap to warm them. “And I can earn my keep around town, even if I don’t have many skills to offer.”

At that Yuuri saw Celestino’s brows draw together in a frown, and Phichit cock his head curiously, birdlike, like they were both on the verge of asking him a question he wasn’t certain he knew how to answer. But then he blinked and took a breath, and when he looked at them again it had passed—or maybe it had been nothing at all, just his imagination, and maybe nerves.

“You’re welcome to stay, of course. I never could refuse Hiroko anything, and my apprentice would certainly benefit from a tempering presence.” Celestino turned to his pupil then, pointedly, making an ushering gesture with his hand at one of the doors. “Give Master Katsuki the spare bed in your room, Phichit. You can avoid any accidents between here and there, I trust?”

Phichit’s grin gleamed like a half-moon then, wild and wicked all across his face, but he was already rising, slinging Yuuri’s pack solicitously over one shoulder before he could protest. “I can at least promise you they won’t be fatal.”

The room was larger than expected—it had been intended, perhaps, to be shared among some previous lightkeeper’s children—and cluttered in a way that made it look lived-in, books and loose sheaves of paper spread out across the one unused bed, a cloak dangling half off the bedpost like it had been tossed there and left to hang however it fell. Phichit set Yuuri’s pack down onto the floor and swept in to clear the space for him instantly, scooping all the mess up in his arms at once and dropping it right back down again onto his own bed, letting what appeared to be the majority of his worldly possessions sprawl like overgrowth across the mattress, because where he himself would sleep was apparently a problem for another time.

Yuuri followed him inside more slowly, shedding his own cloak and draping it over the footboard. Unpacking the rest of his belongings was easy by now after so much practice, clothes in the empty drawer Phichit said was his to use, spellbook and journal and quill on the side table. Everything else could stay where it was until such time as it was needed; there was no need to be so free with his own things, in a room that didn’t belong to him. And anyway other things were already drawing his curiosity away from the unpacking—the three spheres of light that had begun to glow gently overhead as the night closed in around them, and the wide window in the far wall.

“Are those yours?”

“The first spell I ever learned,” Phichit said. With a flick of his wrist he beckoned one of the werelights down from the rafters, spinning it round and round like a ball on the tip of his finger. “They don’t take much from me, and they’re safer than candles.”

A light mage, then. Yuuri had met a few of those the summer past, serving in a temple he’d stopped at briefly to pay respects during his brief sojourn in the royal city. Needless to say, their conversations had been largely ritual exchanges—perfunctory, solemn, and necessarily brief. Nothing at all like Phichit, with his easy laughter and his juggling tricks, and yet the disparity wasn’t unwelcome, for all it came as a surprise.

“Do you want to look at the view?” Phichit opened his hand and floated the light back up. Somehow he’d heard exactly the question Yuuri had been about to ask next. “Go on. It’s a little warmer at night these days.”

So Yuuri did, lifting the latch and letting the window swing wide, and what he saw when he peered out of it was the high grass running up around the stone base of the lighthouse, and part of the white tower looming upward and out of sight, and beyond that the ocean, dark as ink.

“It more or less keeps itself. Master Celestino’s enchanted the whole tower, but the beacon is his finest work. It lights up on its own at night, and when a storm comes, and you can see it out on the water for leagues.” For all their banter, Phichit spoke of his master with so much pride when he was out of earshot. He’d crossed the room to stand beside Yuuri, resting his elbows against the sill and leaning out a little to catch the night breeze. “So we really only stay here because we like to, and because he doesn’t want me causing any _accidents_.”

His voice dropped on the last word, rumbling out of him in imitation of Celestino—a poor impression on the whole, Yuuri thought, but maybe that was the very reason it made him laugh. “How do you spend your days, then?”

“Reading. Walking. Going into town.” Phichit shrugged. “We help weatherproof the boats and such, read the winds for the fishermen. A little healing as well, here and there. You won’t lack for things to do, Yuuri.”

Hasetsu had been much the same, the magic built brick by brick into the walls of houses, sewn stitch by stitch into every cloak and boot—and while Yuuri had loved it from the first, that had not stopped him from wondering what more there might be, out in the wide world. What place there might be for him that was not simply the place where he’d been born. Phichit’s days, too, sounded like they were governed by an ordinary enough routine, prosaic and familiar, and yet his dark eyes were sparkling when they caught Yuuri’s sidelong, as if to say they were on the verge of a great adventure, and Yuuri simply did not know it yet.

He’d write to his mother after supper tonight, if only to tell her that he had found the wizard she’d told him to seek out, and of his inkling that there were other peculiar things still to be found here that would have to wait until his next letter. For now maybe it was enough to be here, on the lookout for those things, watching and listening. Waiting for the stars to come out over the ocean, inclining his head inquiringly when Phichit nudged the point of his shoulder against his upper arm.

“Look up,” he said, and Yuuri obeyed, and looked—just in time to see a beam of bright white blossom of its own accord in the highest window of the lighthouse, shining out onto the darkening water below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ftr it's Ringo as in the Japanese word for "apple," not Ringo Starr, laughcrying
> 
> HERE WE GO


	2. summer

**ii. summer**

 

Down along the coastline, the summer days ran long and hot—except, Yuuri would soon discover, when a thunderstorm came.

One blew in the week before the feast of Sunreturn, when people should have been gathering dry grass and driftwood for the bonfires, and practicing their dancing; instead Phichit and Yuuri found themselves occupied all day with laying calming charms on the stable for their horses, and strengthening charms on the window bolts for their peace of mind. After the rain, there would be even more work waiting for them, but on the wettest night there was nothing to be done but read at the table while Celestino stirred a pot of soup over the fire.

“It never stormed like this at home,” Yuuri murmured, warming his hands around his bowl and willing his voice not to tremble.

“It’s all the warm air, blowing out to sea,” Phichit told him as he spun his spoon in his fingers. Overhead the thunder rumbled, and he laughed like he wanted to drown out the sound. “This one’s just a baby. You could banish it, Master, if you weren’t so busy with the pot.”

“Are you studying to be a mage or a jester, boy? You know as well as I that it’s best not to meddle with nature.” Celestino settled into his place at the head of the table and tore a chunk of bread from the loaf in front of him, clearly meaning to close the book on the matter, but not before he gave Yuuri another one of his searching looks. “Don’t fret, Yuuri; thunderstorms burn themselves out quickly. This one will pass before dawn.”

Sure enough, by the next morning, the skies had cleared, and the grass along the road glistened with the last traces of rain. All together they headed into town, Yuuri astride Ringo and Phichit on the back of the cart Celestino hitched to Chailai.

“Sometimes I drive, and Master rides,” Phichit chirped, dodging his teacher’s halfhearted attempt to cuff him round the ear, “but when he needs to look the hero, it’s the other way round!”

Yuuri had chuckled right along, but fretted secretly about what they would find in town. It was a relief to reach the main road and find that it had been spared any significant damage, and that they were most needed that day at the harbor, the boys helping the fishermen reinforce a few of the older boats, Celestino watching the sky and conferring with the village headman about when it would next be safe to put out to sea. 

The sun was high in the western sky by the time Phichit handed Yuuri out of the old dinghy they had been patching a hole in and called a by-your-leave to Celestino, who merely nodded and waved them off after securing their promise to be back by sundown.

“Come, let’s walk on the sand,” Phichit said. Then he set off down toward the beach without looking back, confident Yuuri would follow.

Together they crossed the shoreline, slowly, talking and tossing pebbles at seagulls until they came alongside a row of high, narrow houses Phichit said belonged to the fishermen. Yuuri counted four doors before they paused, just outside of one from which they could hear, only faintly, the sound of a flute playing.

“Hmm, sounds like someone’s been practicing.” Grinning, Phichit turned toward the door, put his hands on his hips, and without warning sang out, high and clear, “Thou shalt have a fishy in a little dishy! Thou shalt have a fishy when the boat comes in!”

Instantly the music stopped, and what replaced it were sounds of chairs being scraped back and falling over, and cries of “Phichit! I hear Phichit! Phichit’s back!”—and then a little girl with bright eyes and braided hair was throwing the door open and launching herself off the step into his arms, a little boy the same age following right on her heels.

“Phichit, we knew you would come!”

“Mama said you’d be busy, but we _told_ her! You always visit after a storm!”

“It was thundering all night, but those lights you gave us just kept shining!”

“Shining and shining and nothing could put them out! You’re amazing, Phichit!”

Isra and Chati, the Chulanont twins. They’d be turning ten this year, a few days after Sunreturn. Yuuri remembered them from all of Phichit’s stories, of course, even if he’d been too busy—or too shy, if he was being honest—to meet them before; now he smiled to see them, crowding around their brother, talking over one another in the race to tell him more about how brave they had been this past night. Looking at them made him think unbidden of his older sister Mari, who’d talked and walked and acted like a woman grown since he could remember, and his foster sister Mila, who had been that small and fierce herself not long ago. Quietly he promised himself he’d ask after them in his next letter home.

“You wizards. Would it kill your magic if you ever walked through a front door?” Yuuri also knew the name of the woman who appeared at the rear entrance next, wiping her hands on the front of her skirt. She must likewise have recognized him; when her eyes settled on his face, her expression softened, and she smiled. “We meet at last, Yuuri. My son’s been speaking well of you on the nights that he comes for supper.”

Already red in the face from walking so long in the summer sun, he reached out to shake her hand. “Not too well, I hope, Mistress Dara. I’m glad you and your house seem none the worse for wear.”

“We’ve weathered many storms in our time,” Dara assured him, patting the doorpost fondly. “Come sit inside awhile. Children, say hello to Yuuri; you might also release your brother and set the table for tea.”

Phichit’s house was no different from his room at Celestino’s cottage, Yuuri thought, the moment he stepped inside. It smelled of dried herbs and salt, and the shelves and counters were cluttered with cooking pans, clay jars, boxes of yarn and sewing thread—a comfortable, human sort of clutter that told him immediately that people lived in this house and used the things in it.

What caught his interest and held it, however, was the abundance of cloth, hanging on the walls, draped over the backs of chairs; finely woven blankets, scarves, lengths of tapestry patterned with flowers and ocean waves.

“Mama is the best weaver this side of the continent. You’ll find none better, even in the capital.” Phichit winked at Yuuri, and burst into laughter when his mother tweaked his ear as she passed and began to rummage among the boxes on the counter—in search of tea leaves, no doubt. “But she’s shy with her talents, like you.”

Yuuri wouldn’t have known what to answer had the balls of fine undyed yarn in one box not caught his eye, and given curiosity the edge over his own shyness. “Is that alpaca wool?”

“You have a good eye. Last fall I put up a merchant passing through here in search of a ship west. Poor thing was so lost on the roads he could barely tell right from left—he gave me all that as thanks, can you imagine?” Dara shook her head at the memory, throwing her eldest son another pointed look. “I mean it to be a cloak for this rascal, for when he takes his journeyman’s year.”

Phichit poked out his tongue impishly. “You’re better off making shirts to sell, Ma. You won’t be rid of me for a while yet.”

“Tell that to your master. Every time I see him at market he says you’re growing like a weed.” Turning back to Yuuri, she asked, “You’re a crafty sort, then?”

That was one way of putting it, Yuuri supposed. He’d always been best with charms and other small enchantments, weaving his magic into handmade things like baskets and embroidery. His parents had always praised his gift and encouraged him to nurture it, but privately Yuuri had never thought himself particularly special. Since he was a boy his family had rubbed shoulders with spellcasters who spoke to dragons, and knew how to whistle a wind into the sails of the great ships in the king’s harbor, and had read more books at the university library than could be found in his whole village. In light of such things what good was it, really, that he could spell a loom to work itself, or put a shattered bowl back together again?

“I do a few things here and there,” he admitted.

“Perhaps you’d like to see my workshop, then, after you’ve had some time to catch your breath.”

The suggestion—the word _workshop—_ relaxed him immediately. “It would be an honor.”

His sincerity was a poor meeting-gift, but it seemed to satisfy Dara, from the way she beamed at him—and that was when he found there was so much of Phichit, so much that it was startling, in the unabashed way her mouth stretched and her eyes crinkled up when she smiled.

_Well, he had to have gotten it from somewhere._

After an hour and three cups of tea each at table, Dara led them up the stairs, down the hall past the bedrooms, and up a narrow spiral staircase that led into the attic room that housed her loom, her worktable, her bolts of cloth—and, Yuuri soon discovered, a veritable fleet of miniature boats littered all over the floor, each about as long across as a dinner plate. He’d have nearly stepped on one as he ducked in through the door, had Isra not darted in and scooped it out of his way.

“The twins are making them for Eventide,” Dara explained, patting his shoulder to assure him there was no harm done. “If they float well, they mean to give them out to the neighbors.”

Isra tilted her head at Yuuri, curious and keen. “Do you have Eventide in the north?”

“Isra,” Chati warned, frowning. She wrinkled her nose at him.

“We do,” said Yuuri, placatingly, before Isra could make any further retort. “On the night the harvest moon rises, we float boats like these down the river that runs outside the village, to honor our dead and to ask them to continue watching over us. And then we have supper at each other’s houses.”

Eventide, the feast of thanksgiving. He had spent the last one alone, in a mountainside city, but it warmed his heart to remember the rising moon over the village, and the candles like so many fireflies on the water, winding away out of sight. And such meals awaiting the mages of Hasetsu, on the one night of the year that Hiroko closed the inn and enjoined her guests to make themselves at home under their neighbors’ roofs—the fresh bread, the stew, the pies filled with the best fruit of the season and baked to a crisp.

“Yes, the boats with the candles! Here we send them out to sea.” Isra wormed her way under Yuuri’s arm, looking pleased, and he gently ruffled her hair. “I’ve told Phichit so many times we should all use those lights he’s always making, but he keeps saying no.”

“You know I don’t have the strength, Isra,” Phichit reminded her. “And I couldn’t possibly ask my master to share his with me, when he does so much work on the lighthouse beacon.”

“But you make the lights in here all the time! And in your master’s house!”

“That’s two houses. How much power do you think I’d need to light boats for the whole town?”

“But Phichit!”

“ _But_  nothing, flying fish. You’ve made do with candles every year, haven’t you?”

“…You could do it with a charm?”

He didn’t realize he had said it aloud until he had, and then all at once three heads had snapped toward him, and six pairs of eyes fixed on his face, waiting for him to continue.

“Erm, it’s weaving-magic. Sort of. You make a little ring with some thread or twine and put a bit of power in. Then you cast a spell for light on it, and it’ll glow more or less on its own, and sustain itself.” Yuuri caught Phichit’s eye over the twins’ heads and grimaced, looking shamefaced, as though he’d somehow been keeping a secret he owed it to them to tell them, without even knowing he had. “I did that for the boats in my village, though I could only ever spell five or six at a time. I’m not as good with light as you.”

Phichit considered this, turning from Yuuri to Isra and Chati, who watched him in turn with eager faces, to his mother, smiling and leaning against the far wall with her arms folded, to Yuuri again. They blinked at each other. Phichit chewed at the inside of his cheek, hesitated a moment longer before he took the gamble and asked.

“Can we try?”

With the twins’ eyes on them, there was really only one answer. Yuuri nodded, and picked up a few stray scraps of the dry grass the twins had been weaving, and murmuring the words of the charm under his breath wove them together into a ring. He then placed it inside the boat, in the very center where ordinarily the candle would go, and gestured to Phichit to lay his hand on it—and no sooner had Phichit’s fingertips touched the grass than it ignited into a circle of yellow light, not burning hot, only shining in the middle of the darkening attic, more softly and steadily than any candle could.

“You _can_ do it,” whispered Chati. His voice was very small, but his eyes had gone wide and round in his face, glistening in the glow from the little boat.

“If the two of you work together, you could make lights for everyone!” Isra piped, tugging at Phichit’s sleeve until he placed the boat in her hands to settle her down. He touched the ring again, and chuckled at the face she made when the light went out.

“Now, now, I’d need my master’s leave first, you know that. And Yuuri’s, too—it’s his craft that’s going to seal this, after all.”

 _This is something,_ Yuuri thought, _that only I can do._ And even as he thought it he felt his magic dance at the tips of his fingers, the spark of it tingling over his skin in a way it had not done since he was a child making his father’s embroidery needles move across the cloth on their own, learning for the first time what he could do that no one else could.

_Maybe this is something._

“Give Yuuri a bit of time, you two; you’ve made him do enough thinking for one day,” Dara spoke up from her place by the window, and Yuuri quietly let out the breath he had been holding since he enchanted the ring. “And speaking of your master, Phichit. The sun’s getting low, and he’ll be missing you about now, I think.”

Phichit glanced around the attic, peering at the walls and then up into the rafters—searching, Yuuri realized, for something in need of mending or maintenance. He’d done the same thing downstairs too, looking about here and there. “And there’s nothing more you need done around the house, while we’re here?”

“Have faith in the house your father built, my heart.” She rose and crossed the room back toward them, touching his cheek softly before she ushered the twins back down the stairs.  “Make sure to say goodbye to him before you go.”

While Dara and the twins set to getting their supper ready, Phichit said his goodbyes at an alcove by the front door of the house, which upon closer inspection contained nothing but a fishhook and a small glass jar filled with wildflowers. Yuuri hovered just behind and watched him sit down on the step next to the twins’ shoes, and look into it a few long minutes, saying nothing; when he was done, he leaned in and touched the hook, gently, and Yuuri could have sworn it glowed a little under his fingertips.

“I’ll come again, Pa. Sooner, next time.”

He was smiling when he stood up again, like always, and it did not fade from his face when he took his leave of his family with many clasped hands and kisses on cheeks and promises to come back soon, but he was quiet as they started along their way back across the sand, moving down the high dune on the seaward side to be closer to the water.

“Your family is wonderful,” Yuuri told him, after they had gone a ways without speaking. He meant it, too, even if it was mostly for lack of anything else to say.

“That might have been too much for a first visit,” said Phichit sheepishly, bending to pick up a washed-up tangle of kelp and fling it to one side, out of Yuuri’s path. “You’ll have to forgive the twins. Eventide is their favorite celebration; they love it even more than their naming-day, because it helps them feel close to our father.”

Yuuri, who had not stopped thinking about the fishhook, bit his lip. “Was he a fisherman?”

“The best. You’d think he was a mage himself for how well he could read the tides. The sky, too.” Phichit threw his head back, smiling wistfully, scanning the clouds in imitation of how his father must have done it, all those years ago. “He had a sturdy boat, and a little crew and everything, but one of the summer storms caught them by surprise out at sea, years ago. I was twelve then, and the twins were only five.” Without looking at Yuuri, he took a deep breath and added, “You can never tell, I suppose. Master says there are some things that aren’t even for folk like us to know.”

Yuuri looked out at the sea then, taking in the sun’s reflection rippling across its surface, the white caps on the waves as they broke against the shore not five steps away from his feet, the vastness of it opening out farther than his eyes could follow. He had seen sketches of it in books he’d read at the inn, and an illusionist he’d met on his travels had shown him a vision of it, once, that was just like this—and he hadn’t been able to fathom, not a bit, how something so terrifying could also be so beautiful. Facing it now, seeing it as still and shimmering as a mirror on the day after a storm, still hearing the angry crash of water against the rocks below the lighthouse in his memory, he wondered if this, too, was one of those things that was simply not meant to be understood.

“Don’t look so sad, Yuuri! It’s life, you know? The passing of the seasons, and all that.” There was something not quite right still about the way he said it, Yuuri thought—lilting a touch too high, something just a little forced about the brightness. But then Phichit took his arm, and the chance to ask about it passed. “Tell me more about that weaving thing you did. Do you think we could make enough light for a town, with your magic and mine?”

Yuuri took a moment to think about it as they walked on. The wise thing, or at least the thing it made most sense to him to say, was that he wasn’t sure. His was no great gift, after all, and he had never shared so much of it with anyone before. There was so much still that he had to learn, that they both had to learn.

And yet, Yuuri thought. And yet they were learning by doing here, as Celestino always liked to say—and his mother had always said that while magic was everywhere, it was always at its wildest, and its freest, the closer you were to the sea.

“We can certainly try,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Phichit sings is, of course, a bit of the traditional English folk song "When the Boat Comes In."
> 
> The Eventide boat ceremony draws very transparent inspiration from the Thai festival of Loi Krathong and the Japanese practice of tōrō nagashi, and it's happening next chapter and I'm going to cry, probably,
> 
> Dara, Isra, and Chati have been my headcanon family for Phichit since I started writing Phichuuri fic back in 2016, and they just, worm their way into every universe I think to put Phichit in :'''') I hope you come to be as fond of them as I am.
> 
> (I'm sorry for fridging you again, Chuladad.)


	3. autumn

**iii. autumn**

 

“Is there a way,” Yuuri wanted to know, “to make the light without you having to touch it?”

Phichit looked up from the boat he had been tinkering with, head tilted in question. “What do you mean? I’ve never seen a candle light itself.”

Fall had come, and Phichit and Yuuri had taken one of the small boats the twins had made for them to experiment on in preparation for Eventide. They had set to the work at the table in the cottage, and after a single afternoon its surface was already littered with stray strands of dry grass and cotton thread, because Yuuri was nothing if not meticulous, and particular about getting his charms exactly right. It was, he thought, a disposition that came naturally of making things, for all that Phichit, whose magic needed no such solid anchors, laughed and called it fussiness—but always with that bright smile and that dancing gleam in his eye that told Yuuri it was only ever a joke.

“I just mean you could lay the foundations of the spell the way we’ve been doing, but it seems like an awful lot of work for you to light the boats one by one on the day.” Yuuri rested his chin on his hands, trying to ignore the fluttering feeling in his stomach that had a habit of starting up whenever he tried to contemplate the scale of the undertaking. You couldn’t simply think things into being—that took a kind of strength they were each a long way off from having yet, even working together. “All the boats except the last few will have floated off the edge of the world by the time you finish, and then there won’t be anything left for you to enjoy.”

“Sweet of you to think of me,” Phichit said, with a smile. “I hadn’t even considered that.”

“Could you set a time, like the lighthouse beacon, and your werelights? Nightfall, or moonrise?”

“I could, but… I just realized it’d be a bit boring if they all come on together.” A question appeared to cross his mind, and whatever he was thinking made him frown, suddenly unsatisfied. “With candles, we don’t light them until right before the boats sail. It’s like the stars coming out, you know? A few at a time, until all of a sudden…” Phichit tapped a pensive fingertip against his lips, turning the boat from side to side in his hand as if looking at it long enough might reveal the answer. “If we’re going to do this, I’d like to do it well.”

It was then that Celestino took the opportunity to come into the cottage, bearing a large package wrapped in parchment paper, which he proceeded to lay on the counter and unwrap. The fat striped bass within, already gutted and stripped of its gills and scales, would undoubtedly be their supper, but just at the moment it seemed Phichit was hungrier to have his riddles solved.

“Master, is there any way to make spells of light self-igniting?”

“Light always needs to come from somewhere,” Celestino answered as he washed his hands. Then he took a pair of lemons from the shelf and a sharp knife, and began to slice. “Sparks need fuel, tinder, something to catch onto before they burn. All magic works this way—things listening to other things, responding to other things.”

“How you like to speak in riddles,” teased Phichit, rolling his eyes.

Celestino’s laugh was a quiet rumbling sound in his chest. It had never ceased to remind Yuuri of the first onset of thunder, or a tremor in the earth. “What I would most like is for the pair of you to keep thinking for yourselves. Sometimes the answers you want are right in front of you, you know.” He didn’t even look up as he set to stuffing the fish with the lemon slices, and with enough dried herbs to make the air fragrant. “Pass the salt, if you please, Yuuri.”

“My eyesight must be getting as bad as Yuuri’s, then.” With an impish grin Phichit took the bag of salt Yuuri handed to him, and stood to place it on the counter, within hand’s reach of their master. “No offense meant, of course. I’m glad you have those spectacle things to help you see better.”

Yuuri smiled, adjusting his spectacles so they sat higher on the bridge of his nose. “None taken.”

The answer didn’t come, however, until the next day. They were down by the shore, gathering water in clay jugs to take back up the cliff to make more salt, when an epiphany seemed to seize Phichit and pulled his body upright until he was standing straight up again, the surf curling and wrapping and lapping at the rolled-up ends of his trousers.

“Oh, stars! Salt!” he cried, and shook the jug so hard some of the seawater splashed into his face.

That made Yuuri laugh, even as he had already begun to reach into his pocket for a handkerchief. “You’ve got some in your eye, now.”

“Salt _water,_ Yuuri!” said Phichit, emphatically. He had the good sense not to shake the jug again, and instead gave it over for Yuuri to hold as he wiped his eyes. “Why do you think everyone says magic runs wild near the sea? Saltwater is one of the most useful natural catalysts you can hope for.”

It made sense, of course. Running water was a friend to mages, as was salt, which could function as a conduit for power in every ritual Yuuri could think to name, concentrating the magic and bringing it into focus. Immediately it felt silly that they hadn’t hit upon it sooner, when the ocean was all around them, ever-present as the air they breathed. But then again perhaps that was exactly why.

“The question is if there’s a way to craft the spell such that the light ignites when it touches the water.” The handkerchief and the jug changed hands again, and now Phichit was peering at him curiously, the way he always did when he had the pieces of a thought beginning to come together in his mind but he needed to another pair of hands to help put it together. “Would it come down to your weaving? You’re my anchor, after all.”

Yuuri considered this a while, going back in his mind over everything he knew about catalysts—and yet for some reason a stray thought kept tugging at him, pulling him back in the direction of something more ordinary, something like embroidery, making a chain stitch—

And then, without warning, it came to him and clicked. Without question there was something about being near the sea, Yuuri thought, that made him feel like he could do anything. “I have an idea.”

Phichit beamed at him. “I like it when you’re the one to say it.”

Later, kneeling in the grass behind the cottage, they filled a basin with the seawater they had gathered—“We can transfer it into a pot when we boil it for salt later,” Phichit assured him, “Master won’t mind”—and brushed it all along the bottom of their boat. When it dried, Yuuri took the boat in his hands, and drew in a deep breath.

“Stay over here. You’ll need the magesight to see what I’m doing.”

Phichit drew in closer beside him and settled one hand on Yuuri’s shoulder; Yuuri felt the pulse of his friend’s awareness, crackling and warm at his back. He closed his eyes, and began.

As a boy Yuuri’s father had taught him to sew, and then after that to knit and spin and weave, and it seemed to him the most natural thing in the world when they began to work the magic into even those most seemingly ordinary, banal processes. Even here, so many years later, he almost imagined he could still hear the gentle voice guiding him—teaching him, step by step, how to twine the threads he needed together, where to make the knots to keep them from coming apart.

First he worked with what spells they had already laid, Phichit’s magic a shimmering gold, like sunshine, Yuuri’s own the familiar soft blue of a winter sky, twisted all about the woven ring he had made. With his mind he reached out, slowly, tugging the intertwined threads out longer, and longer again, like the ring was a skein feeding more and more thread. It was here that Yuuri started to sew, narrowing his focus down to a needle’s point and bringing these threads together with the quiet strands of power inherent in the materials themselves, because magic was everywhere if you knew how to look for it—the seafoam-white of the saltwater, the pale green of the dry grass, Phichit’s spell and Yuuri’s, all making a chain of tiny stitches all across the bottom of the boat. A loop here to connect one thing to the other, a knot there, a whisper: _When you touch the water, make the light._

They were already grinning at each other when they pulled back their magesight and all the color flowed back into the world around them, but somehow more vibrantly than before, the grass around their knees greener somehow, the crags of the cliff a stark, chalky white where they jutted out and then plunged downward toward water the color of ink. When their breathing had settled, and the beat of their hearts quietened, they set the boat afloat in the basin—and cheered so loudly at the way the ring lit up that Celestino later told them he could hear them from all the way up in the lighthouse tower.

That night Yuuri wrote home to his mother, as had been his habit all this time away, telling her of all he had done and all that he and Phichit were making together, and of Phichit’s family, and of the way the colors of autumn were different here by the ocean. The message-hawk came with her response within the moon: _Here the farmers are bringing in the harvest, and the leaves are beginning to turn. Mila is cross at having to sweep them every day now from the front yard, but she smiled when your father told her they were the same lovely red as her hair. She and your sister are up to their ears in apples this year, which means we’ll likely have cider to last us until you come home. All the blessings of Eventide upon you and your wonderful friends, my dear boy._

Yuuri kept the letter tucked into the front of his tunic, over his heart, as he and Phichit began to prepare for Eventide in earnest, helping Isra and Chati make boats out of Dara’s workshop, spelling the ones they received from the townspeople once news of their doings had floated out on the wind. It was quick work, and all the easier to do happily when they saw that no two were quite the same, even among the ones the twins had made—lithe canoes and flat-bottomed barges, sometimes with small sails or canopies, the sides painted over with intricate patterns or decorated with seashells. It was also at Dara’s insistence that they took a bit of payment for their trouble, in goods if not in coin, and by the time Eventide drew near Ringo’s saddlebags had been filled to bursting several times over with packages of dried fruit, smoked fish, herbs, bread.

The biggest gift of all came the day before the festival, when Celestino surprised them at the harbor with a rowboat he had borrowed from a fisherman acquaintance. It was sturdy, he assured them, for a craft so small, and would carry the two of them safely as long as they kept the shoreline in sight. The important thing was that they get the chance to see what came of all their labor from a good vantage point.

Phichit beamed so wide at the little skiff that he looked about to crack his face in two, but before Yuuri could say a word Celestino reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “No need to look so afraid, Yuuri. The sea is always calm at Eventide.”

“You’re in safe hands with me,” Phichit agreed. “I was learning to handle a boat as soon as I could walk!”

Yuuri knew it was true, and also that Phichit was quite possibly the bravest person he had ever met, to still love the sea—so he said “I trust you,” and meant it.

And so it was that the next day at sundown, Yuuri Katsuki stepped for the first time into a seafaring vessel—or something that was very nearly that—murmuring a prayer under his breath. Phichit got in behind him and took the oars in hand, and rowed them out on the gentle crest of a wave, and out, and out again. They were not the only ones taking a craft out, by far; a few of the fishermen and their children waved at them as they passed, but fearless as ever Phichit continued to row until the shore receded from view, and the shapes of his family on the pier where they had left them shrunk down to mere specks at the very edges of their line of sight.

“It won’t be long now.” Phichit nocked the oars. They bobbed in place gently, the water calm and clear all around them, and Yuuri breathed in deep to still the last persistent fluttering of fear in the pit of his stomach. “This is my second favorite part.”

“The waiting?”

“Yes,” he said. “The waiting makes everything better.”

They watched the sun from there, dipping down below the line of the horizon as it had on the day Yuuri came to town, and when it had passed out of view and the last of its light had faded all around them, and they saw the lighthouse beacon gleam in the distance, they knew it would soon be time. Turning together back toward the shore, they waited, silent as a held breath.

Yuuri saw it first, wordlessly laying his hand against Phichit’s arm and pointing—one glimmer by the shore, then another by the docks to the west, then another, then another, floating outward. Then a scattering from the boats nearby, more and more, until what they were looking at was no less than an armada of tiny light-bearing ships, making its way across the shining sea. Dozens of lights, hundreds, all aglow in the darkening evening like fireflies, like—

“Like a sky full of stars,” Phichit murmured. It sounded odd coming out of him, quiet and shaky, like he was about to cry, and perhaps also to burst out laughing at the same time. “Isn’t that something, Yuuri?”

Sure enough, there were tears on his face when Yuuri looked at him, but it was true that he was also laughing, freely, with all the abandon of someone who always had the doors of his heart open. And in that moment Yuuri realized that all he had told his family of Phichit in his letters home—that he dealt in light magic, that he loved to swim and sail and catch fish, that he laughed and smiled more often and more generously than anyone else Yuuri had ever encountered in the village and on his travels both—had not even begun to scratch the surface of what he was.

_The bravest person I know. It’s true. You will find none braver in all the king’s armies._

“Our turn?” Yuuri asked, and by way of answer Phichit handed him the boat Isra and Chati had made especially for the two of them—a light and narrow vessel, with fluttering miniature sails and a flying fish painted on the prow, fins fanning out at its sides like wings. Together they put it into the water, holding their breath until the tiny orb of yellow light bloomed into being in the center, their own little star.

Yuuri looked back, then, toward the shore, not much more than a line at this distance. He thought of Isra and Chati, and Dara, and Celestino, waiting for them at the harbor they had set out from. He could not help thinking of his family, too—his mother and father and Mari and Mila, and all the people of Hasetsu village, floating their lights and their hopes and their prayers down the wide, wide river. Perhaps even toward this same sea.

“Why did you leave home?”

The question seemed to come for a moment from nowhere, and made Yuuri turn back toward Phichit, wondering. “Did I not tell you this story already?”

“Not quite. You’ve told me things about where you were born and what your travels have been like, but never why you left.” After a pause, Phichit added, quietly, wiping absentmindedly at his cheeks with the hem of his sleeve, “I’ve been wanting to ask for some time.”

“Well,” Yuuri said. And then nothing further for a while, as he gathered his thoughts, but Phichit watched his face and waited. “You already know my parents run an inn. When I was growing up, I saw them host all sorts of people—people who had been everywhere and could do everything, while all the magic I could do was the magic I was born into. In a way, it still is.” How far away it all seemed, now. The day he left felt like it had been a dream ago. “I love my family, and my village. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about them. But I suppose I wanted to know where I belonged, and I couldn’t know that if I didn’t see more of the world.”

“I understand.” He didn’t ask, _Do you know now?_ And after so many moons with him Yuuri knew it was because, for all Phichit was curious, he was also kind.

“When I was younger,” Phichit went on, fingers tracing idle circles into the wood at the bottom of the boat, “before I went to live with Master Celestino, I was always helping out at the docks with my father. I’d run errands for him and his mates, get underfoot when they were doing repairs. I liked it best in summer, when the trading boats came in with the merchants and the weatherworkers—everyone who passes through here and doesn’t stay.”

Yuuri thought he could imagine that. “Was that your dream?”

“Oh, yes. I thought that would be me one day, you know? A real seaman, just going wherever where the wind took me. Making the wind take me places, when I was strong enough.” The memory made him chuckle. “I hadn’t even started studying yet, really. Master told my parents I should live out my childhood years with them, and that he’d take me on when I turned thirteen, and not before.”

Dara had told him the story of how Phichit awoke to his magic, Yuuri remembered, a moon ago over the noon meal—how she had always had an inkling her son was touched by something out of the ordinary, from the way he could stand on the pier in the evening and count the boats carrying their catch home across the water, and the way the candles he lit always burned long and steady, against the wind. But, she said, they did not know for sure until the turn of his seventh summer, on the night his brother and sister were due to be born, when Phichit ran for the midwife and returned with her in tow and two werelights floating above his head. Dara had spoken about them as if she could still see them floating in the doorway of her room, two warm golden spheres that shone like broken-off pieces of the sun itself.

How long it had been, Yuuri thought, and how much he must have learned since then. How much he must have endured, too.

“But then, well.” Phichit waved his hand at the sea like he could hear Yuuri’s thoughts—a wide, generous gesture, without resentment or blame, simply showing it to Yuuri for what it was. “Everything was different after, of course.”

“That’s why you felt like you had to stay.”

“It’s not that anyone trapped me here. Mostly I just didn’t want Mama and the twins to lose someone else so soon. Moving out of our house was hard enough.” He sighed, rubbing restively at the back of his neck as though there was an itch there that no amount of scratching could address. “They want me to go, of course. At least for a year, they always say, but I’ve been waiting for, I don’t know. Can you call it a sign?” Then he looked up, at the rising moon. “That my father can see me. That—that something is right.”

Listening to him then, Yuuri knew he could understand, all too well, what it was like to search so hard for something even if you had no idea what it was. Sometimes all you had was the hope that you would recognize it when you saw it—some kind of permission to take a certain path, some proof you were keeping your eyes open for, wishing desperately for it. In a few days, Yuuri thought, his own naming-day would come, and he’d be twenty, and he could not say for certain that he was any closer to finding his own way than when he had first set out.

 _And yet,_ whispered a voice inside him, softly, so softly he had to listen close to remember it was there, _and yet maybe there is a reason you made it here. Something for you to learn, that you might not have found anywhere else._

“I think your father can see everything, Phichit,” he said, into the gathering dark, with more hope than certainty—but how he did hope, with everything in him, that it might be true. “No matter where you go.”

Phichit smiled again, then. “Stars above, I hope so.”

They sat together there, rocking with the waves, until the moon rose and the other boats began to turn for the shore. When their stomachs grumbled, one after the other in a funny sort of chorus, they knew it was time to go back.

Chati was sitting to one side of the pier when Phichit brought the boat back in, one of Dara’s scarves around his shoulders to protect him from the night chill. She stood just behind, one hand on the top of his head, and Celestino next to her with Isra on his shoulders, waving her arms at them from across the restless water. Phichit flung the rope up. His mother caught it, mooring them safely in place, and when he and Yuuri made the leap back onto solid ground she embraced them both, one arm around each of their necks, holding them tightly against herself like she would never let them go.

“Come here, you crazy boys,” she said, muffled against Yuuri’s shoulder. “Wonderful boys. There’s a fish as big as Chati waiting for us at the house. We’ll feast like royals tonight.”


	4. winter

**iv. winter**

 

“Yuuri, come out! Mama and the twins must at least be on their way by now!”

Yuuri lifted his head, and glanced at the door. He had been using the tower room of the lighthouse as a makeshift workshop over the past few weeks as he cobbled together a modest collection of Longnight gifts—all handmade, of course, because Phichit and his family and Celestino deserved no less—and had of course extracted solemn promises from his friend and master both that they would not enter or spy. The door rattled slightly on its hinges under Phichit’s vigorous knocking, but stayed shut, even if Yuuri had left it unlocked as a show of good faith; even Phichit, it seemed, found the idea of being surprised delightful enough to actively rein in his curiosity.

“I’ll be just a moment more, Phichit!”

“That’s what you said an hour ago! If you take any more moments, it’ll be spring by the time you finally finish!”

Yuuri looked out at the endless spread of winter sea he could see through the glass, steel-grey and foamy as Phichit said it always got in the cold months, so startlingly different from the greens and blues of summertime. So it was true the whole world over that everything put away its colors in winter; at home, he knew, it would be snowing fit to cover the whole town in white, every road and rooftop, and Mari would be complaining about having to clear the yard alone for yet another year.

He ignored the fresh round of hard knocks on the door and picked up each of the presents he had prepared, turning them in his hands and making sure that the charms were holding—protective bracelets for the twins he had woven out of colored string and bits of shell and seaglass, for Dara a wide, shallow basket for her thread and needles, for Celestino a carved walking stick, for Phichit a scarf. The magic hummed beneath his fingertips, firm and strong. Over his shoulder, the door rattled again, followed by a thumping sound that must have been Phichit throwing his weight against it in exasperation.

_“Yuuriii.”_

“All right, all right.” Laughing, he spread the cloak he had brought up here for this exact purpose over the items, and gathered them together into a bundle. He patted the beacon once, fondly, before finally opening the door. “Let’s go before you catch your death.”

“You look about to catch _your_ death, wandering around in your shirtsleeves,” Phichit protested, rubbing at his own upper arms as though the mere sight of Yuuri with his cloak under his arm and not around his shoulders as it was supposed to be was more than enough to chill him to the bone. “It’s a cold year, too.”

Yuuri hummed bemusedly under his breath as they descended the winding staircase together. “Is it, really? I couldn’t tell.”

“I suppose not, since you get _snow._ I can’t imagine how you survive snow.” The effort of trying to imagine it was enough to make him wrinkle his nose. “It must be beautiful, though.”

“It is until you have to shovel it.”

Together they entered the cottage, carefully tidied up from top to bottom for the occasion. The floor had been swept clean the day before, the table cleared, Celestino’s books returned to their places on the shelves— _for once!_ thought Yuuri, smiling to himself. And hanging in the windows and on the front door were wreaths Yuuri himself had woven from ribbon and braided rushes, while Phichit had lent his magic to making dozens of smaller werelights, sparkling row on row up in the rafters.

Celestino was sitting by the fireplace, stirring a pot over a low flame. He looked up when he heard the door open, nodded approvingly when he saw who it was. “Ah, Yuuri, there you are. The stew’s been waiting for you.”

“I already took my turn,” Phichit added with a wink as he hung his cloak up on a peg by the door. “We figured we’d save the best for last.”

Yuuri remembered this old tradition from Hasetsu. At Longnight, shortly before suppertime, his mother had made a practice of gathering all the mages in the village in the inn kitchen, where they took turns passing their hands over the pot, infusing the stew with a little magic and a lot of goodwill for the coming year. _It’s a way to make everyone feel that they belong,_ Hiroko had said, the one time he thought to ask about it, smiling gently even as her spectacles began to mist over from the steam. _And you get such a variety of different flavors depending on who contributes. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?_

His mother and Celestino were old friends, so perhaps it was to be expected, but Yuuri was happily surprised to see an echo of her practice here, all the same. As he had done so many times before, he laid one hand over the pot, feeling the warmth of the bubbling stew drift slowly upwards to touch his open palm. And he closed his eyes and summoned up good thoughts, his best thoughts, which followed the clean, straight lines of his magic down into the very tips of his fingers—thoughts of joy, and gratitude, for this strange and funny family he had found so far from home, and for the meal they were going to have tonight that would make each of them feel richer than the king.

When he finished and withdrew his hand, Celestino looked into the pot, nodded once, satisfied, and laid the lid over it to keep it warm until suppertime. As if on cue, they heard a pair of singing voices sound from outside, lilting together in perfect harmony—“And it’s windy weather, boys, stormy weather, boys! When the wind blows, we’re all together boys!—and in an instant Phichit leapt to his feet and ran out to join them.

“Blow ye winds westerly, blow ye winds, blow! Jolly sou’wester boys, steady she goes!”

Then the door swung open a little more and Dara stepped into the cottage with a basket on her arm, lowering the hood of her cloak and looking mischievous as a girl. “My, it smells like heaven in here! What a banquet the three of you must be preparing.”

The children were still singing when Phichit brought them in, an old song about naming all the fish in the sea that Isra said was a favorite among sailors, and Yuuri hummed along as they set the table together, slicing the bread Dara had brought into rounds, laying out plates and cups and filling the biggest jug in the house to the brim with cider. Celestino, naturally, took charge of serving his precious stew, rapping Phichit smartly on the back of the hand when he reached for the ladle—but they were laughing, and the bowls were filling up one by one, and soon the windows had grown dark and it was time to gather around for supper and celebration to last all through the longest night of the year.

The table was small for such a crowd, and they had to squeeze together a bit, with Celestino at the table’s head and Isra on his right hand and Phichit on his left, and then Yuuri and Chati, and Dara at the other end, but it was pleasant to Yuuri to have everyone so close by.

Isra put one hand to her stomach, which had already started to grumble, and sang out, “Let’s eat!”

“The blessing,” Chati interrupted, just loudly enough to be audible, but his eyes were wide and solemn as he turned them on Celestino. “We can’t start without it.”

Celestino had been half-reaching for the first slice of bread when he spoke up, but checked himself just in time, drawing his hand back to pick at a run in his sleeve instead. “Ah, yes. Of course. Yuuri, how about you do it this time?”

Yuuri immediately felt himself flush all the way down to his neck. Without thinking he put up his hands to shield himself, spluttering, “Oh no, no, no, I couldn’t. Phichit, you do it!”

“How about we all do it?” Phichit countered. Clearly he liked the idea enough to ignore the way both Yuuri and Chati squeaked at the unexpected suggestion. “All of us. We can take turns to say our thanks.” With a sweet smile that brooked no argument and a nod in the direction of his brother, he added, “You start, angelfish.”

“You’re terrible,” Yuuri whispered under his breath, to which Phichit answered only, “Well, he did remind us!”

But Chati, to his credit, folded his hands atop the table and pushed bravely on. “I g-give thanks for the year that has passed,” he murmured. There were ritual words for the Longnight blessing, Yuuri knew, but most everyone from here to the capital tended to take just the beginning and the end and make up the rest as they went along, to better suit what they had felt and experienced over the course of the past year. “For my family, and for my house. For Mama’s loom, and for Papa’s fishing-songs, and for the lights Phichit gave us that make it easier to sleep at night.”

“I give thanks for our neighbors, especially for the fishermen!” Isra continued. “For the sea, with all its fishes. For Chati, for always giving me the bread he can’t finish at suppertime.” Her twin pinched the back of her hand reprovingly—not nearly hard enough to hurt, from the way she giggled in response.

“I give thanks for my craft, and for my children.” Dara’s eyes were warm as she looked around the table, grew warmer still when they came to rest on Yuuri, and he dipped his head to her in deference, shy but no less fond. “And for the friends they keep close, old and new.”

Celestino’s voice, so comforting to Yuuri by now for how it reminded him of a river making its way over the stones, tranquil and sonorous and low, sounded from the head of the table. “I give thanks for magic, great and small. I give thanks for warmth, and for light, and for the turning of the seasons and all they have to teach us.”

“I give thanks for laughter,” Phichit chimed in. He caught Yuuri’s eye and beamed, and under the table his hand squeezed Yuuri’s wrist—for courage, perhaps. Courage for them both. “For tears, too. And for strength, and for kindness—for the way they come to me when I least expect it, and when I need them most.”

There was silence for a long moment after Phichit spoke, with only the fire crackling in the grate to fill it, and Yuuri realized belatedly that his turn had come.

“I give thanks for—for the road that led me here,” he whispered—because it was, in many ways, the only way he could encompass every good thing that had found its way to him since. “For the chance to bid the old year farewell with all of you, and to welcome the year that is to come, together.” He looked up, the better to take in the circle of faces that had taken less than a full year’s span to become as dear to him as his own kinsfolk, and smiled. “A warm Longnight to all.”

“Warm Longnight!” the others around the table chorused, raising their cups and clinking them together in blessing before they ate.

Yuuri must have been halfway through his first bowl, chewing slowly as he listened to Celestino tell them the story of a fisherman whose allegedly cursed storehouse turned out to be haunted by no more than a trapped seagull, when Phichit nudged him gently with one shoulder. “I always look forward to Master’s Longnight stew, but your magic really pulls it together.”

“Oh? What is it like?” He’d always thought it was a shame that mages could never quite taste their own magic in a dish they had helped prepare—only sense it, dimly, in the same unthinking way you knew the sight of your own handwriting. Celestino’s, for instance, was like a good red wine—rich and spirited, so robust as to be unmistakable.  He wondered if anyone had ever told Phichit his was as tart and sparkling as a harvest of ripe lemons.

“Yours is sweet. It reminds me of clover honey, fresh from the hive.” Phichit brought another spoonful of broth to his lips, as if to ascertain what he’d just said, and gave a satisfied nod. “It’s like being home.”

Everyone else back home had said so too, or something similar. He’d forgotten it for a time, but it was good to remember, now and again. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Isra hold out her hands for the serving plate; Yuuri passed her two slices of bread, and smiled when she blew him a kiss across the table, warm and content.

After dinner, they sat down together by the fireplace to give gifts, exchanging books and woven wall hangings and packets of herbs. Yuuri received a set of new sewing needles from Celestino, polished to a fine gleam, and a linen shirt from Dara. His lap was soon also full of seashells from the twins, who had oohed and ahhed with delight at the bracelets he had given them and proceeded to get into a long argument about which of them would get which colors, and on what days they would exchange them, to keep things fair.

In the midst of the ensuing chaos, Phichit folded himself down onto the stones next to Yuuri and gave him his own gift—a chunk of rough-cut white quartz that glistened in the light from the fireplace, but gave off a gentle glow when Yuuri cupped his hands around it. “Since Eventide, I’ve been trying to put more light into things, the way you showed me, like seashells or stones. It doesn’t always work—some minerals take to magic better than others, you know how it is—but I was pleased with how this one turned out.” He grinned, looking a little shamefaced, showing Yuuri the pale burn scars on the pads of his fingers where a spell or two must have gone awry.

Yuuri remembered he’d thought nothing about them a few days ago—his own fingers were similarly scarred and roughened from years of practice and study—and felt a pang of guilt, but there was pride there too. “You’ll be a great sorcerer one day, Phichit.” He reached for the little paper-wrapped parcel he had set to one side, placing it with only the most modest of flourishes in Phichit’s hands. “This is for you.”

The scarf Phichit proceeded to unwrap was hand-knitted, the yarn a vibrant scattering of blues and greens that faded into one another, reminiscent of the deep summer sea. Dyeing the wool had been a trial he had needed to sneak down to Dara’s workshop for help with, on a fortuitous day that Phichit was up in the lighthouse and the twins were away at school. But all the work was worth it, surely, for how it left Phichit speechless now, his mouth gaping like one of Isra’s precious fish.

“When you set out on your great adventure, you’ll want something to keep you warm,” Yuuri explained, once the silence had stretched on long enough to become strange. He took a breath to gather his courage, and smiled.“If you winter in Hasetsu, you’ll definitely need it then.”

“Right, because it snows.” Beaming, Phichit opened his arms and drew Yuuri in for a brief, tight embrace, just long enough to murmur in his ear, “You’re the best mage I know, Yuuri. Don’t tell Master I said that.”

They were laughing when they parted, having added that little secret to the ever-growing dragon’s hoard of things they had told each other in confidence, and Yuuri felt something settle in his heart—a safe, tender feeling he didn’t think he could quite describe in words if he had to, except the ones Phichit himself had used. _It’s like being home._

And soon enough Chati was producing a set of panpipes from his pocket, and Isra started up the old sea shanty again about all the fishes in the sea—only this time Yuuri did not hum but sang along, looking to Phichit for the words, and Celestino accompanied them on a lute he only ever played on festival days, and Dara clapped her hands in time to this song, and another, and another. They did not stop making music until long past midnight, when the children were falling over each other from sleepiness and their mother put them to bed in Phichit and Yuuri’s room, which the three of them would be borrowing for the night.

Yuuri was still humming an hour later, once he and Phichit had helped Celestino finish the washing, as he laid out a few of the spare blankets for himself on the still-warm stones of the hearth and watched the fire’s last dying embers burn themselves out. _Thou shalt have a fishy in a little dishy, thou shalt have a fishy when the boat comes in._ “I think after Hasetsu this must be the place I like best in the whole world.”

Phichit had already rolled himself into his own blanket-nest, bundled up chin to toes against the cold. “No, not after all your travels, surely?”

“Yes, surely,” Yuuri said, curling up next to him. It was strange to be so comfortable with only the bare floor under his back and his balled-up cloak for a pillow, but possibly the Longnight magic had something to do with it, or the wine. “When I left the inn, my mother told me to keep my eyes open, because I had grown up with magic all around, but I was about to discover that there were always new ways it could show itself to me, if I made it a point to look for them.” He smiled at the ceiling, his eyelids already growing heavy. “She was right.”

“Your mother sounds like the sort of person I’d love to meet,” murmured Phichit, and Yuuri could hear some of the thickness, some of the sleep-fog, creeping into his voice too.

“She’d adore you, for certain.” He yawned into the folds of his blanket, but there was just the one thing more to say, just one thing that couldn’t wait until morning. “Warm Longnight, Phichit.”

For a while, who knew how long, there was only silence, wrapping around them like another blanket and cradling them both close. But just before Yuuri dropped off completely, he thought he heard Phichit answer “Warm Longnight, Yuuri” from far off, one last little song in the darkness—or perhaps he imagined it, already floating away as he was into some dream or other, on an outgoing tide so gentle it didn’t scare him at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The twins' fishing song this chapter is "The Fish of the Sea," a sea shanty popularized by, of all things, _Assassin's Creed._
> 
> A warm Longnight to all and to all a good night! <3


	5. spring, again

**v. spring, again**

 

The sun had not yet risen, had in fact only begun to make itself known as a faint lightening along the horizon when Yuuri rode down from the cliff and into town. He sat tall in the saddle, peering straight ahead as though to pierce through the darkness with only his desire to see everything he had come to know and hold so dear for the last time—the line of the water and the bobbing shapes of the boats, the roofs of the houses all along the shore—

“Yuuri.” Phichit spoke up from behind him, voice lancing through his thoughts like morning’s first shaft of sunlight, the sort that always fell just so through the gap between his curtains and landed square on his sleeping face. One hand shook his shoulder gently, nudging him awake. “You’re getting sentimental again, aren’t you.”

“Wh-what?” He couldn’t very well turn around to face his friend, but maybe that was just as well; it also meant Phichit couldn’t see, or at least not too clearly, how he had turned red all the way to the roots of his hair. “No, I was just thinking.”

Phichit only laughed. “For you, that’s the same as getting sentimental.”

It had been midwinter when Yuuri decided he was ready to return home. He’d brought it up at supper in Phichit’s house during the New Year feast, while they were all discussing their wishes for the year to come, and though the twins had clung to his arms and protested and Isra had nearly cried just to emphasize how little she liked the idea of not having him close at hand anymore, Celestino had laid a hand upon his shoulder, and Phichit and Dara had met each other’s eyes across the table and smiled and said it was for the best. That it was about time for him to go back and be where he belonged.

So Yuuri had written home that very night and flown the letter off the next morning, to let his family know without delay that he was ready at last to stop wandering, and to settle back down in Hasetsu. Possibly it was also providence that Celestino came home some days later with news that the trading ship that had wintered in town after being blown off course some moons ago would be sailing north with the first thaws, and that he had befriended the captain, and that he had it on good authority that there was certainly room aboard for one journeyman mage and his horse. The trip back, Celestino assured him, would be faster by sea than overland, and Yuuri had Celestino’s word that he was more likely to be safe than not, whatever calamities he might have been imagining.

At the time Yuuri had taken a deep breath and accepted, and done his best not to imagine any calamities, even if the thought of storms and pirates and sea dragons crept up on him from time to time. Now, it was newly spring, and Phichit and Celestino were making ready to release him to this towering ship that he had only ever seen from a distance, the latter already dismounting and beckoning for Yuuri to follow as he made his last few inquiries of the captain.

“Try to stay a steady course for my apprentice here, would you?” he was saying as Yuuri approached—lightly, almost jesting, but there was something firm about the set of his chin and the way he rested his hand on Yuuri’s shoulder that made it clear he meant what he said. “He’s stout of heart but very weak of stomach, if you take my meaning.”

 _My apprentice._ Yuuri glowed a little, to be so referred to, and that at least rapidly overtook his fear, as well as any embarrassment he might have felt at being discussed so frankly. The captain assured Celestino before he went about the last of the morning’s business that he did indeed have a weatherworker aboard, a decorated graduate of the university, and that by all accounts it seemed they were in for a particularly mild spring this year. After they had shaken on the matter and the pouch of silver coins that would cover board and food and passage all changed hands, he departed, and Celestino turned to fix Yuuri with one of those long, appraising looks that always made him want to stand tall.

“Keep the wind ever at your back, my boy.”

Yuuri’s throat tightened, but he thought of all he had learned and gathered his courage from some deep unseen place and he found then, to his surprise, that he could smile. “Thank you, Master.”

They embraced then, briefly, but so tightly Yuuri felt all his bones come together for a moment, and then Celestino too was gone, striding back the way they had come with Chailai by his side, needing no more than a light hand on her shoulder to show her the way to go. This was the Master Lightkeeper, after all, who did not suffer fools—in a way, it was heartening for this farewell to be so ordinary, the better to remember that certain things didn’t change so easily, even as the rest of the world might.

Phichit took his place, leading Ringo by the reins. “I’ll help you put her up.”

A bell sounded from somewhere on deck, tinny and clear, making Ringo prick her ears forward and Yuuri turn his head toward the sound. It was easy enough to guess at its meaning: _All aboard. All aboard._

“You don’t have to. Knowing you, you’ll get caught up in chatting with the crewmen and the ship will shove off with you still on deck.”

“Then I’ll swim back,” countered Phichit, chuckling, flapping a hand at Yuuri as he began to lead Ringo carefully toward the gangway. As he stepped off the pier he said again, more firmly, “I’ll help you put her up.”

When Yuuri turned to face the ship, the masts leaning overhead seemed somehow taller, the furled sails whiter, now that there was nothing left to do but step aboard it and let it carry him home. He breathed in to steady himself, deep and slow; he could taste the sea-salt in his mouth, almost. “That’d be a great help.”

Together they led Ringo up onto the deck and across to a row of wooden stalls that had been erected to house the merchants’ horses. They filled the manger, lined the floor with fresh straw—and in a little slip of a second when he thought Yuuri wasn’t looking, preoccupied as he was with inspecting the hay bales, Phichit slipped her a sugarcube from his pocket.

“Goodbye, sweetheart. We’re friends now, aren’t we, you and I?” Phichit kissed Ringo on the nose and grinned in halfhearted apology when Yuuri caught his eye. “It’s just the one. Don’t be a stick in the mud.”

“You’re spoiling her,” Yuuri protested with a laugh—just as halfhearted, considering the day. “She’s not going to listen to a word I say now.”

They walked back the way they had come, meandering, pretending to be weaving their way around passing sailors and piles of cargo when in truth they were only really dawdling over their goodbyes. When they finally reached it they only stood there for another long moment, peering out over the side of the ship, each probably wondering in the back of his mind when the other was going to say it first.

“So, we’ll write.” Yuuri leaned one arm against the rails, not quite knowing where he should look—at Phichit, or back toward the town, or at the vast blue unfurling of sky and water in the distance, going on and on for forever. He settled for letting his eyes drift, over the lengths of rope that littered the pier, the stacked crates. “And you’ll help keep the light.”

“Always,” Phichit promised, an easy smile in his voice Yuuri could hear. “Who knows, you may see me again sooner than you think.”

“It won’t be soon enough,” said Yuuri. There were other things he wanted to say too, after that—things about gratitude, about his wishes for the future—but it was easier to simply reach over and pull his friend into his arms, to feel Phichit squeeze all the breath out from between his ribs for just a moment and to know that he had been understood, easily, easily.

Overhead the bell sounded again, once and once again, possibly for the last time. It made Yuuri pull back, though his hands stayed still on Phichit’s shoulders, holding him in place, unwilling to let go. “You’d better go back down, unless you want to make good on your word to swim to shore.”

“I’d swim a whole sea’s length for you, just watch!” Phichit reached up and scuffed the hair on top of Yuuri’s head before he broke away at last, and even in the predawn dimness Yuuri could see his eyes were wide and bright as they’d been at Eventide, bright as the stars shining up out of the water around their boat. “Be safe, my friend.”

He took the ramp at a run, leaping the last few steps between it and the dock; just for fun, probably, Yuuri thought, just because he could. Yuuri watched as the sailors around him hoisted the gangway, listening all the while for the unmistakable soft whistling of a magewind in the sails that would help to move them out of the harbor on the outgoing tide, and when he turned his eyes back shoreward Phichit was still there, beaming, with his arm lifted and waving in such wide arcs Yuuri imagined it would come loose from his body. And there was nothing to do then, of course, but to wave back with equal spirit, and to keep waving until his shoulder ached and his friend had shrunk down to the size of a speck across the water—but even when they had nearly left the town behind, Yuuri swore he had glimpsed a light blossoming above the pier, a single white burst in the air like a star being born, and high on the clifftop he could still see the lighthouse beacon shining right along with it, lighting the way forward until the sun came up.

Yuuri had seen many strange and wondrous things in his short lifetime, but he had never for a moment imagined he would ever make a journey oversea. Growing up he had always been too afraid, too cowed by the sea’s vastness, by his own smallness, by the mere imagining of it. But by now perhaps he had learned a kind of courage, too; perhaps this was as good a name as any for what kept him on his feet in the weeks after, until towards the end he even dared to think that he might be learning to like the constant motion, the perpetual rocking and lurching that knocked him about on deck like his feet were not his own and made its way even into his dreams.

He stayed nearly two weeks in the port town his ship came to, to rest Ringo and replenish his supplies for the last leg of his journey. On his sojourn there he applied himself to assisting the fishermen with such tasks as he knew they could always use a little magic to ease their way with, mending their nets and spelling them to hold even in the face of strong currents, stitching their sailcloth with charms for protection against wind and water damage. In exchange he was given a room at the inn and provisions for the road, and permission to borrow two of the town’s most robust message hawks. One was to go back the way he had come, and the other to go ahead, each bearing the same message: _I am well, and I embrace you. Within the moon I will be home._

The morning after he sent his letters, Yuuri departed the town at first light, and no longer looked back. These were roads he knew, now, and he could be certain he wouldn’t lose his way.

It was nearing mid-spring when he came, finally, to the humble, tucked-away valley that cradled the village of Hasetsu. The skies overhead were blessedly clear, and had been all through his last days on the road, and Yuuri’s heart quickened at the sight of fields he recognized, familiar faces calling out to him as they pruned and weeded their crops. As he passed the final farm and the path began to slope gently upward toward the village, he heard a cry from up ahead—and looking up he saw a fiery-haired silhouette that could only be Mila, perched on her friend Sara’s shoulders and staring in his direction as though she had been scouting for signs of him all this time. Yuuri made ready to call out to her, but she must have already recognized him, going by the way her arms flailed upwards and she nearly sent Sara tumbling to the ground in her haste to get off her, and then Sara was running into town and Mila was cupping her hands around her mouth and shouting his name down the road first.

“Where have you been all this time, you old thing?” she called. She was laughing, and the sun was setting behind her, red on the crowns of the trees and on the roofs of the houses. And there was no mistaking the eagerness with which something in Yuuri caught that light and held it, like a lamp in the coming night.

“All over!” he shouted back, and spurred his horse on to meet her, up the old and well-worn road that had led him back home at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anddd that wraps up the main story. :') Goodbye for now, Fantasy-Detroit, and thank you so much for taking this journey with me!
> 
> All my love goes out especially to Megan and May, who have been so lovely and supportive of this little story I've been cobbling together for them; this fic never would have grown the way it has, if not for you. <3


	6. winter, again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's a little epilogue to tie everything together! Thank you so, so much for taking this journey with me <3

**epilogue: winter, again**

 

One of the best things about the village of Hasetsu, at least in the private opinion of one Yuuri Katsuki, innkeeper-in-training, was that it was quite possibly the safest place in all the world. Not to say, of course, that nothing untoward ever happened there, but by and large throughout its history it had been spared the ravages of drought and plague, of earthquake and thunderstorm, of wild beasts and brigands and famine and war. Most days a fall from a horse or a touch of the flu was the worst misfortune that might befall someone here; that was the good thing, Yuuri thought, about being such an ordinary place, a little village in a valley that didn’t even have a place on most maps.

At least, that had been the case until tonight. Tonight—a seemingly ordinary night, in this most ordinary of places—Yuuri had woken up with a gnawing in the pit of his stomach, a grumbling that wouldn’t pass no matter how much he tossed and turned in bed. Of course the only thing for it had been to tiptoe downstairs, going as softly as he could so as not to disturb any of the guests, and retrieve the last half of the chicken pie that his mother had left covered on the kitchen counter after supper, having made too much again, as she always did.

He had just brought the pie into the dining area after warming it up with a spell—had scarcely begun making his way through it, really, when he heard a noise. A series of noises, rather, a crunching and a shuffling up the path from the gate that could only mean someone was in the yard outside, moving in what sounded like a rather ungainly fashion through the snow that must have collected over the course of the evening.

The noises paused. Yuuri did, too, his fork half-raised. No one upstairs seemed to be stirring, meaning no one but he had noticed yet. They started up again. Yuuri brought his fork to his mouth, vacillating, wondering if he should go to the door—or bar it with every chair in the room, assuming the prowler outside posed some kind of threat. Not that a barricade of chairs would hold for very long, surely, against an assault of even middling strength, but it would be long enough at least for him to raise the alarm, supposing—

And then he heard a thud, and a voice he thought he recognized shouted “Gods!”

His concern won out then, for someone who was at least more likely than not to be a person, and less likely than not to kill him, so Yuuri rose from the table with a haste that nearly knocked over his chair, hurrying to the door even if his mouth was still full of pie.

He didn’t know what exactly he expected to find when he opened the door. Indeed it took a bit of time to ascertain that it _was_ a person, so heavily cloaked and hooded as to be almost formless. They were on their hands and knees in the snow—they must have slipped, Yuuri thought, coming up the path—and struggling to right themselves, so it was near impossible to make out their face, but the voice _had_ been a little familiar, as were the sounds they were making now, quiet huffing and puffing noises that might have been laughter if they weren’t so out of breath. And the lights that sparkled all about their head and shoulders, tiny greenish-gold pinpricks floating in the air that Yuuri had briefly mistaken for fireflies; only they couldn’t possibly be fireflies, not so deep into winter.

Recognition dawned. Yuuri swallowed his pie, and almost coughed up a lung when it caught in his throat on the way down.

 _“Phichit?”_  

“Stars above, Yuuri, you were right! Snow is beautiful to look at, but being out and about in it’s as good as killed me. I nearly cracked my head on your doorstep, can you imagine?” Without waiting for Yuuri to answer, possibly having surmised that he wasn’t going to, gaping as he was, Phichit pulled himself to his feet, brushing the dusting of snow from his sleeves and from the front of his trousers. Now he was standing upright, Yuuri could see it more clearly—the knitted scarf tucked snugly around his neck, the downy threads sometimes blue under the light of the lamp overhead, sometimes green. “Have you ever tried juggling out in the cold like this? I’ve been doing it here and there, you know, to pay my way, but just imagine how little I can feel my fingers sometimes, especially after dark—”

He kept on talking, but Yuuri couldn’t answer, could barely string the words together into something he understood for all he could hear them well enough. It felt almost like he was walking in one of those strange dreams he had from time to time, the ones so close to life they very nearly fooled him into believing they were real, but for some detail that turned the whole picture on its head. Once he had dreamed that the sky turned pink and everyone had simply gone about their business as usual without ever seeming to notice, and once that Mari had begun keeping a cow in the dining room. Tonight, it was that Phichit had made his way across the ocean to visit him, just as he was always saying he was going to in his letters, just as Yuuri was always wishing he would, silently on the evening star; that Phichit was here now, in Yuuri’s own Hasetsu village, had to be the stuff of a dream he’d regret waking from in the morning, he was certain of it.

 _“Yuuri._ The wind is picking up. Any moment now I’m going to catch my death, and so will you in that flimsy nightgown.”

On impulse Yuuri pulled his shawl tightly around himself, almost as though Phichit had walked in on him in the town baths and not on the doorstep of his very house at an unreasonable hour of the night. Between the two, he wasn’t sure which would have scared him more. “It is _not_ flimsy! Nor is it a nightgown.”

“It’s the flimsiest nightgown I’ve ever seen, Yuuri, and I grew up in the south. If there’s anything more than that magic of yours keeping you warm, I’m eating this scarf you gave me.” Phichit shook the scarf’s tassels in Yuuri’s face for emphasis, but as he leaned forward he seemed to catch a glimpse of something; probably the plate still on the table, from the way his eyes widened. “Is that pie?”

“Yes, yes, it’s pie,” Yuuri snapped, knocking his hand away. Something about how solid it was brought him to attention, then, enough to realize he was not still asleep and dreaming after all, and to ask what he had not stopped wondering about since he answered the door. “Are you coming in? Are you _staying?”_

Phichit laughed, a bright sound Yuuri had sorely missed—though he was perhaps only just getting the measure of how much. “Do you have a room for me, innkeep?”

That was when Yuuri realized he had more questions— _How did you come here? Are you taking your journeyman’s year? How long do you mean to stay? How is our master? Your family? What have you learned, since last we met?—_ so many more it looked to be impossible to have them all answered standing half-in and half-out like this, shivering in the cold, at so late an hour. That was when Yuuri remembered there would be time to talk in the morning, and the day after, and however many days after that, more than time enough to catch up on all that they had missed—and discover new questions together, perhaps, just as always.

For a moment, it was almost as if he had come home a second time, and found everything he’d ever loved waiting for him just where he’d left it. This was probably a kind of magic too—the quiet, bone-deep knowledge that even the very wisest caught hold of only once in a rare while, that things were exactly where they were supposed to be.

“Welcome,” he said, standing aside to let his friend in, and Phichit wiped his boots on the mat as he entered. The little lights about his head and shoulders did not fade, but rose and brightened, lifting slow into the air until they found places to settle in the rafters—where they proceeded to shine on, steady as the stars.


End file.
